Average Detentions per Month

Percent of Detentions with Search or Frisk

Ratio of Black to White Citizens Detained

About the Data

A temporary detention involves a police officer holding and questioning an individual for a short amount of time. The police only need reasonable suspicion for a temporary detention. Detentions may be accompanied by some form of search or frisk, though not all detentions involve a search. Detentions can be dispatched in response to a call or initiated by an officer.

This analysis is based on records of temporary detentions made by the City of Charlottesville Police. The data was received in response to Freedom of Information Act requests by Jeff Fogel made over multiple time periods. We have aggregated the data to two primary time periods:

• Period 1: mid-July 2012 to mid-June 2014
• Period 2: January 2016 to mid-October 2016 combined with January 2017-December 2017

Navigate to additional pages for further analysis:

• Who? compares the percent of Black and White detentions to the overall population in the city.
• Where? visualizes where Black and White citizens are detained by the police.
• Why? shows the reason recorded by the police for the detention across Black and White residents.

Detentions, with and without Search/Frisk, by Race

Detentions per 1000 population for Black residents (2-year period)

Detentions per 1000 population for White residents (2-year period)

All Years of Data

Changes Over Time

Segmenting by time period, we see a few trends

• Firstly, there is greater dispersion of stop and frisk throughout the city during the 2017 time period
• That said, there is a noticeable decrease of stop and frisk in some predominantly black neighborhoods such as the Rose Hill nieghborhood.
• Despite those decreases, stop and frisk of black individuals in areas with predominantly student housing increased, specifically in the Grady, Rugby Road, and Emmet Street Areas in addition to the areas south of west main by the train tracks and Jefferson Park Avenue.
• Finally, Stop and Frisk increased significantly, particularly for black individuals, in the Prospect/Orangedale Ave area.

2012-2014

2016-2017

Exclusive Spaces

This is where I think we could tie in some narrative that you are collecting, Jordy, to analyze some specific spaces that may have more fraught histories. I gave an example with the Mall.

Downtown

This needs to be prettier

The Downtown Mall is a public space for free use by Charlottesville residents.

• In the periods of 2012 -2014 and 2016-2017, 26 Black individuals were detained by police
• 22 White individuals were detained in the same period.
• 73% of Black individuals stopped (19 individuals) were also searched and frisked
• 31% (7) of White individuals were also searched and frisked.

What these analyses cannot account for is frequency of utilization of the space. Not many individuals live in this area, although 83% of those who do are white. Speaking with Charlottesville residents of color….